A Fun Way To Lower Your Risk of Dementia

Every 3 seconds, someone in the world develops dementia.  

Today, there are more than 50 million diagnosed cases of dementia worldwide.  And by 2030, this number is expected to increase to 80 million.

A fun way of keeping your brain sharp and lowering your risk of dementia is to play with a Rubik’s cube. If you’ve never given it much thought, you might be surprised to discover how much fun it is to work at solving one. To encourage anyone who has interest in working with a Rubik’s cube, I created the simple, step-by-step tutorial above.

If you have any questions about the specific steps demonstrated, please use the comments section below the video at YouTube. I had a lot of fun as a youngster, racing to break speed records during rainy summer days, memories of which came flooding back earlier this year while showing our boys the simple steps to solving Rubik’s cube.

Under the video at YouTube, if you click on the down arrow to expand the description area, you’ll see timestamps that will take you to specific steps in the process of solving Rubik’s cube. You’ll also find links to two different types of cubes:

The cube used in this video: https://amzn.to/36cYSk1

Original Rubik's cube: https://amzn.to/3zuFm2a

Please consider sharing this tutorial with children and elderly in your life, as working with a Rubik’s cube is excellent for sharpening and maintaining cognitive function and overall nervous system health, including fine motor control and registration of sensory input. And if you find the tutorial useful, please hit the like button under the video.

Other games that can help keep your mind sharp include chess, crossword puzzles, Sudoku, and even simple matching games with cards - we often play one called Concentration where all the cards in a deck are spread out face down, and each player takes a turn flipping over two cards, scooping up any pairs that he or she matches. If a pair is matched, the player continues, if not, the two cards are flipped over face down again and the next player takes a shot at any two cards, looking to match a pair. The person with the most collected pairs by the end of the game wins.

Learning and using a second or third language is also an effective way of warding off dementia, as is putting ourselves in a wide variety of social situations where we interact with new people and have conversations on matters that require we stretch our minds to some degree to absorb and contribute thoughts - this was the topic of my first vlog in early 2019, which you can find here:

https://youtu.be/jUX-5XUE0Pw

Over the years, I’ve had some people ask why dementia is such a concern since a person who develops dementia likely won’t be able to process their suffering.

The reality is that Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia are typically indirect causes of death. For example, someone with Alzheimer’s may not be able to understand let alone convey to caretakers that he or she is having pain on urination - an undiagnosed and untreated case of a urinary tract infection could make its way up to the kidneys and eventually into the blood, with sepsis being the ultimate cause of death in such a case.

There are countless other ways that dementia can lead to death caused by other factors, of course. So it’s highly worthwhile to align our daily choices with the maintenance of a healthy nervous system.

A more comprehensive look at root causes of dementia deserves its own post and newsletter. For today, I hope that you consider engaging in mental games or social activities that can help keep your cognition sharp. Beginning with a Rubik’s cube. :)

Please also remember that cognition and nervous system function are largely tied to vascular health and a buildup of homocysteine in the blood and accumulation of amyloid and tau tangles - more on amyloid and tau in the future.

To learn more about homocysteine buildup and how it increases risk of neurodegenerative and cardiovascular disease, please feel free to review:

https://drbenkim.com/articles-homocysteine.html

The formulation at our catalogue that best combats buildup of homocysteine in the blood is the following organic whole food multi:

https://drbenkim.com/sunshop/index.php?l=product_detail&p=147

https://drbenkim.com/sunshop/index.php?l=product_detail&p=150

With best wishes until next time,

Ben